The
Cement Bag Lady
Sai Yai, Nontaburi
Nid is a woman in her late 30s. The wrinkles of wisdom appear on her face as the late afternoon sun casts its ray sideways. She glances away from the sun towards the shade where a large housing development is slowly propping up in front of a green rice field. They belong to the Sai Yai co-op in Nontaburi province.
"Your husband better be back on time to see this," says a fat
man excitedly.
"I don't think he'd make it this month, though," she says. "He's
on a very tight schedule in Pattaya."
"Well as long as he sends money, it's ok right?" teases the
fat man.
"Yeah, it's ok," Nid turns to her friends. "We women don't
cheat; one husband is enough for us!"
"Unlike the men," says a sullen lady with
large eyes.
"No not really. For the men is just heat of the moment, but in the
end they are always crawling back to us," says Nid with a thin smile.
The fat man whispers to me; he says that Nid's husband now walks on a limb because last year - on October 7th 2008 - he went to join the protest in Bangkok and got injured when the police opened fire on the crowd. Nid and her husband just had their new baby for about 4 month when Nid got a call from her friend that her husband was injured by the police. He used to work as a mason for this cooperative, but after the fateful event in October, he could no longer lift heavy things so he became a doorman in a hotel on Pattaya beach.
We all walk pass a large poster advertising a cement product; and to our surprise, Nid is in the poster board; smiling at her prospective customers.
"So you've become a product presenter!" I
observe.
"Yeah, I just happened to be around when we're doing the photo shoot,"
says Nid.
"We?" I ask.
"I mean the co-op" corrects Nid.
"The co-op is making cement bags for sale?"
"No, our builders here use this particular cement brand, so they in turn help spread the word about our building teams, you know. They even put our contact number in the ad so other people could hire us," says Nid.
There
are 33 houses that that are now finished. They are built by a team of
residents here. Each house costs about 200,000 baht each; they are 2-stories
high. The residents here are becoming professional builders; they take
outside jobs in addition to building their own houses here.
"The goal is to have the entire 4 hectare of land filled with 268 houses," says a large black man behind me.
"268 houses," repeats Nid as she nods.
"Yes, you know, in the near future there will be 5 rows of houses
just like what you see here. It's in our community master plan,"
says the black man.
"Are you one of the builders here?" I ask.
"Yes, he is!" shouts Nid from the front door of her house. "He's
the head builder here - the chief."
"But how did you guys managed to buy so much land? How much did it cost per square meter?" I ask.
"Well,"
says the chief, "each plot of land is 128 square meter; and it cost
42,000 baht. That's for you to build one house. It's a very reasonable
price - you can't get this amount of land anywhere else. But there's this
3 meter front setback and 2 meter rear set back."
"The rear setback is useful," says Nid, "it can be used for washing and drying clothes. But the front setback is completely useless."
The chief says that each house is thus 100 sq. meters after all the setback and roadways have been subtracted out.
"So the saving group pays for the entire land cost?" I observe.
"Not entirely, but the municipality also pitched in to support us," says the chief. "They paid for some people who could not afford it. But we all paid for our own houses; we haven't taken out any housing loan; the saving group money is sufficient."
I walk into Nid's house along with the builder and a few other residents who come from other communities and who is also interested in getting a house like Nid's.
"It's
so spacious here," says a young lady who comes from Bangkok.
"It's still very messy" says Nid.
"Come on, they're just looking at the house; not your stuff!"
says a fat lady who lives next door to Nid.
"But even though the space is large, it's far from the city," says Nui who also comes from the Bangkok. "For us who're used to living in the city; I think we will have a hard time getting use to the pace of life here."
"Oh, even here, some people still complain that it's too small; people in this area are use to living in big spaces," says the chief builder.
"We can't just bring people from the city to see this because they'd think that they could have this in the city too," says Nid.
"Yeah, in the city, it's impossible to have such a large house; the land is so expensive there," says the fat lady.
"I want to invite my kids to come live with us," says an old man who still lives as a squatter in Bangkok.